WAR/DRAFT/VETERAN AFFAIRS

The resignation letter of Secretary of Defense James Mattis that was published last Thursday revealed much of the Deep State mindset that has produced the foreign policy catastrophes of the past seventeen years. Mattis, an active duty general in the Marine Corps who reportedly occasionally reads books, received a lot of good press during his time at Defense, sometimes being referred to as “the only adult in the room” when President Donald Trump’s national security and foreign policy team was meeting. Conveniently forgotten are Mattis comments relating to how to “Be polite, be professional, but have a plan to kill everybody you meet.” His sobriquet in the Corps was “Mad Dog.”

Hours before the New Year's ball dropped in Times Square, US Strategic Command published - then swiftly deleted - a seemingly insensitive tweet making light of the US's violently interventionist foreign policy just weeks after President Trump ordered one of the biggest troop drawdowns in recent memory.

In a play on the annual ball-dropping ritual, StratCom tweeted that "if ever needed, we are #ready to drop something much, much bigger" than the New Year's ball.

A video of B-2 bombers dropping two 30,000-pound conventional weapons during a test run accompanied the video, according to the Associated Press.

Webmaster's Commentary:

Very not funny, folks, and particularly unfunny to people living on a first-strike target here on Oahu, because all military communications go from here eastward.

Ask yourself whether you are willing to kill in an unjust war, whether decrees from the US government can provide sufficient moral justification for you to slaughter folks in Afghanistan or Nicaragua (in my day), or anywhere, and whether being called a coward is more frightening than selling your soul, so to speak.

The stalwarts of these two ‘servants of empire’ Republican and Democratic parties; and last but surely not least many of my friends and neighbors who still buy into the lie.

Let me be as clear as a rare smog less big city day: So long as we continue to allow private money into electoral politics, there will never be the foundation for a true democracy… Period!

Just imagine if wealthy interests could not openly bribe politicians with campaign donations. Perhaps maybe then we could see some semblance of economic justice and a healthier public.

Webmaster's Commentary:

In the Unhinged, Surveilled State of Amerika, we have the "illusion" of actually having a voice in the choice of our leadership; unfortunately, however, far before we are allowed to vote for our "choice" in a Kabuki-style, ballot-binging style, all people who run for Federal office, have been thoroughly vetted by the heads of corporations, the deep state, to make sure that the candidates will "deliver" for them, once they are in office.

So what does this mean, practically?!?

It means that no matter who gets elected, this country has only one party; the war party, and these wars have become nearly perpetual in nature, as the only way of accomplishing the geopolitical "grand game" of the US government.

It also means, most generally, that whatever Israel wants, the US government will give it to them, as by now, courtesy of Sheldon Adelson and Israel's (current) Prime Minister Netanyahu

And I would tend to believe that the impetus for Trump's alleged "rethink" on Syria didn't come from phone call from Turkey's Erdogan; I would much more strongly suggest that the impetus phone calls came from both Sheldon Adelson, Trump's biggest financial backer of the 2016 elections, and Israel's Bibi Netanyahu, threatening heaven knows what to Trump, or the US, if US forces withdrew.

Due to the persistence of surviving crew members and the continual emergence of new revelations, the national veteran's group American Legion has passed Resolution 40 calling for Congress to "publicly, impartially, and thoroughly" investigate the attack by Israel on an American ship in 1967, in which 34 American sailors were killed and hundreds of others were wounded. The resolution comes despite a veil of government secrecy which keeps key documents on the attack classified more than 50 years later. [NSA USS Liberty documents.

The attack, which surviving crew members to a man say was deliberate, as well as a stellar list of high-ranking officials, has never been officially investigated outside of a Navy Court of Inquiry and an NSA probe. Surviving crew members were not allowed to testify to key points which did not fit the official conclusion that it was an accident.

Webmaster's Commentary:

This may only happen when pigs make the amazing discovery that they are aerodynamic, but to have such respected, Veteran-centric organizations asking for this, may mean "The times, they are a'changin" for Israel's hubris and impunity, and believing that they can get away with any crimes, particularly against American targets, in order to further their geopolitical goals.

What I want to know here, is, who do they believe will be "the enemy" with which they will, at some point, engage militarily?!?

Looking at how this unprecedented representation of these countries, coupled with the level of professionalism needed to coordinate and pull such exercises together successfully, were I a betting woman, my bet would be... Iran.

Washington’s hegemonic aims represent the greatest threat to world peace and humanity’s survival.

At his annual marathon Q & A news conference last week, Vladimir Putin warned about possible nuclear war, a growing threat because of Washington’s reckless geopolitical agenda, including withdrawal from the Iran (JCPOA) nuclear deal and INF Treaty, as well as its reluctance to negotiate extending New Start (April 2010) on reducing and limiting strategic weapons, expiring in February 2021 if not renewed.

Based on bad advice from regime hardliners, Trump falsely called New Start a bad deal favoring Russia. It’s nothing of the kind. It’s even-handed, shifting things to less war and more peace globally.

Last October, John Bolton called for withdrawing from New Start. He convinced Trump to abandon the JCPOA and INF Treaty. He advocates greater US toughness against all sovereign independent countries.

According to a report by RT: [1] “A high-ranking Turkish delegation arrived in Moscow on Saturday, only a day after international media broke news on Kurdish militias inviting Syrian forces to enter Manbij before the Turks do. Syria’s military proclaimed they ‘raised the flag’ over Manbij, but there have been no independent reports confirming the moving of troops into the city.”

The report notes: “The Saturday Moscow meeting was key to preventing all actors of the Syrian war from locking horns over the Kurdish enclave, Middle East experts believe.”

“Obviously, Turkey will insist that it is their forces that should enter Manbij, Russia will of course insist the city should be handed over to Assad’s forces,” Kirill Semenov, an Islamic studies expert with Russia’s Institute for Innovative Development, told RT.

Webmaster's Commentary:

I have hopes (and prayers) that this can be intelligently accomplished, so there is no more loss of life on any side; and IF Russia has actually brought Turkey and Syria to the bargaining table on this issue, my hat is off to them.

When historians examine the first few decades of the so-called post-Cold War era, they are likely to marvel at the clumsy and provocative policies that the United States and its NATO allies pursued toward Russia. Perceptive historians will conclude that a multitude of insensitive actions by those governments poisoned relations with Moscow, and by the latter years of the Obama administration, led to the onset of a new cold war. During the Trump administration, matters grew even worse, and that cold war threatened to turn hot.

Since the history of our era is still being written, we have an opportunity to avoid such a cataclysmic outcome. However, the behavior of America’s political, policy, and media elites in response to the latest parochial quarrel between Russia and Ukraine regarding the Kerch Strait suggests that they learned nothing from their previous blunders. Worse, they seem determined to intensify an already counterproductive, hardline policy toward Moscow.

Over a year ago we reported on the fact that the Saudi-US-UAE coalition in Yemen has been increasingly reliant on foreign mercenaries, including even officers, from Sudan to execute its three-year long ground war against Shia Houthi rebels as coalition jets pounded urban areas from the skies. As this was long before the brutal Jamal Khashoggi killing at the hands of the Saudis, we were among a tiny handful that bothered to cover it — aside from a few Middle East outlets — significantly before western mainstream media suddenly "discovered" the tragedy unfolding in Yemen, a Saudi-driven conflict the UN has belatedly called "the world's worst humanitarian crisis".

Although the glider, able to carry megaton-class nuclear weapon, was presented along with SARMAT missile system tests, super-fast drone torpedoes, cruise missiles with nuclear power plants, the air missile system "Kinzhal" as well as laser and hyper-sonic weapons as one of the newest additions to the Russian arms complex in March, the newspaper claims it to be proof of sabre-rattling by the great powers in the wake of US President Donald Trump announcing his country's withdrawal from the 1987 INF Treaty in October.

What makes Avangard unique is its manoeuverability as the vehicle constantly changes its course and altitude while it flies through the atmosphere, zigzagging on its path to its target, making it impossible to predict the weapon's location, as former Russian Defence Minister Sergei Ivanov revealed. This characteristic ensures that the target this hypersonic missile is actually heading to remains virtually secret, according to the US think tank Rand Corporation.

The US Army is apparently searching for cutting-edge technologies to be used in its military service, and new players in the field seem to be popping up, along with an established Chinese manufacturer.

Israeli firm Roboteam is competing with Massachusetts-based Endeavor Robotics over a series of major contracts to build the US army’s top-notch generation of ground robots. Those machines will be designed to be smarter and easier to run than the remote-controlled rovers that have helped troops disable bombs for more than 15 years.

Donald Trump's official rejection of the role of a global "policeman" could be called the most important event of the outgoing year, Sputnik contributor Ivan Danilov writes, stressing that the cracks in the foundations of American hegemony have already become too visible.

Donald Trump's abrupt withdrawal from Syria and a partial pull-out from Afghanistan have indicated that the US is no longer capable of pouring trillions of dollars into expensive overseas operations, says Russian economist and Sputnik contributor Ivan Danilov.

During his surprise visit to Al Asad Air Base in Iraq on 26 December the US president declared an end to America's role as a global "policeman", stressing that it is "ridiculous" to maintain presence "in countries most people haven't even heard about".

NATO-Russian relations have been complicated over the past years as the alliance maintains its course for eastward expansion. The alliance has been also stepping up its military presence in Europe since 2014, using the alleged Russian involvement in the Ukraine crisis and what it describes as general destabilizing activities as a pretext. Moscow has refuted the allegations and warned that such a policy may undermine stability in the region.

“(t)he way to end (North Korea’s nuclear program) is to end the North.”

Webmaster's Commentary:

The only minor problem with Bolton's foreign policy scenarios, is that they are barking-mad delusional, and in no way fact-centric.

I have never met someone who worked for the IAEA; but these are all highly intelligent people, with words on their CVs I would probably have to look up in a technical on-line manual.

So when these people are telling me that Iran is still following the P5+1 agreement to the letter, even after the US government has withdrawn from it, and have no nuclear weapons program, as recently as this last fall, I would tend to agree with them.

In my world, the US government's throwing the US military (for whom I have the highest respect) at problems which should be handled with morally responsible, hard-won negotiations with countries with which we have differences, tends to have catastrophic results.

Please take a look at how horribly the wars against Iraq, Afghanistan, Somalia, Syria, and Libya are going.

And yet, Bolton is advocating more wars against countries like Iran (very apt to bring Russia to its side), should such a thing get greenlit by the White House, and war against North Korea (which would almost definitely get China on its side).

So one must conclude the following rationalization of wars which do aid or help the American people in any way; Bolton is a large stockholder of the many military industrial complex companies, which prosper immensely from wars, and/or he has outsourced US foreign policy to Israel's Prime Minister Netanyahu.

President Donald Trump has at last rediscovered his core foreign policy beliefs and ordered the withdrawal of U.S. troops from Syria. Right on cue, official Washington had a collective mental breakdown. Neocons committed to war, progressives targeting Trump, and centrists determined to dominate the world unleashed an orgy of shrieking and caterwauling. The horrifying collective scream, a la artist Edvard Munch, continued for days.

Trump’s decision should have surprised no one. As a candidate, he shocked the Republican Party establishment by criticizing George W. Bush’s disastrous decision to invade Iraq and urging a quick exit from Afghanistan. As president, he inflamed the bipartisan War Party’s fears by denouncing America’s costly alliances with wealthy industrialized states. And to almost everyone’s consternation, he said he wanted U.S. personnel out of Syria. Once the Islamic State was defeated, he explained, Americans should come home.

Webmaster's Commentary:

Bolton should definitely be the first to go.

He has shown himself to be contemptuous; hubristic; and ultimately the "poster child" for appallingly lousy foreign policy decisions emanating from the Trump White House.

While the Sweden-based Yemen talks are over, consultations have continued among the various combatants. These have resulted in another deal, with the warring parties agreeing to reopen Kilo 16, the main road connecting Hodeidah and Taiz to the capital city of Sanaa.

This is a huge move for civilians, allowing them to travel out of combat zones to safer places, and also allowing for humanitarian aid shipments out of the aid port of Hodeidah to those other cities.

Dutch Gen. Patrick Cammaert, the head of the UN monitor group, suggested that Hodeidah should be used as the port of entry for all aid into Yemen. That’s likely going to be a tough sell, with neither side having withdrawn from the surrounding area of the city.

With Turkey’s imminent invasion of Kurdish territory in northeastern Syria expected to begin any day, the Kurdish YPG has quickly secured a new alliance with the Syrian government. Within short order, the Syrian Army has arrived in the city of Manibj, on the Euphrates River, to help with its defense.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights is reporting that this first deployment is of over 300 Syrian troops, with military spokesmen saying they are to deploy on the city’s outskirts with the goal of “defeating all invaders and occupiers.” There are US and French troops still within the city of Manbij itself, and Turkish-backed rebels advancing on the city from the north, with the expectation that this will be the first target of the new Turkish invasion.

Webmaster's Commentary:

Perhaps this consolidation between Kurds and the Syrian government will work well for both parties.

And I am sorry; the Turkish government has absolutely no right to chastise the Syrian government from doing anything it wants within its sovereign territory; but it will get dicey if Turkey, a NATO country, winds up attacking US, Another NATO country, or Iranian, or Russian troops still working in the area.

In the week before President Donald Trump’s reported decision to abruptly withdraw 7,000 U.S. service members from Afghanistan, the top U.S. commander there all but admitted that the 17-year-old war there will not end with a military victory for the Pentagon.

“This fight will go until a political settlement,” Army Gen. Scott Miller, the commander of U.S. Forces-Afghanistan and the Resolute Support mission there, told CNN when asked whether the Afghan campaign against the Taliban had reached a stalemate. “These are two sides that are fighting against one another, and neither one of them will achieve a military victory at this stage.”

In the same interview, U.S. ambassador to Afghanistan John Bass concurred with Miller’s assessment, cautioning that U.S. and Afghan officials will face a complicated diplomatic situation given the Taliban’s aggressive rejection of the current administration in Kabul.

Too many of those protesting the removal of U.S. forces are authors of the catastrophe that tore Syria to pieces, reports Max Blumenthal for Consortium News.

Birthing ISIS From the Womb of Regime Change

During the run-up to the invasion of Iraq, Clinton, Kerry, and the rest of the Beltway blob lined up reflexively behind George W. Bush.

The insurgency that followed the violent removal of Iraq’s Ba’athist government set the stage for the declaration of the first Islamic State by Abu Musab Zarqawi in 2006. Five years later, with near-total consent from Congress, Hillary enthusiastically presided over NATO’s assault on Libya, cackling with glee when she learned that the country’s longtime leader, Moammar Gaddafi, had been sodomized with a bayonet and shot to death by Islamist insurgents — “We came, we saw, he died!”

Webmaster's Commentary:

There is one element regarding the assassination of Qaddafi this article will not touch with a 10 foot pole, and treats it like Kryptonite, something to stay away from at any cost. But here it is, from Hillary's own email, nonetheless:

One of the 3,000 Hillary Clinton emails released by the State Department on New Year’s Eve (where real news is sent to die quietly) has revealed evidence that NATO’s plot to overthrow Gaddafi was fueled by first their desire to quash the gold-backed African currency, and second the Libyan oil reserves.

The email in question was sent to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton by her unofficial adviser Sydney Blumenthal titled “France’s client and Qaddafi’s gold”.

From Foreign Policy Journal:

The email identifies French President Nicholas Sarkozy as leading the attack on Libya with five specific purposes in mind: to obtain Libyan oil, ensure French influence in the region, increase Sarkozy’s reputation domestically, assert French military power, and to prevent Gaddafi’s influence in what is considered “Francophone Africa.”

"Five years later, with near-total consent from Congress, Hillary enthusiastically presided over NATO’s assault on Libya, cackling with glee when she learned that the country’s longtime leader, Moammar Gaddafi, had been sodomized with a bayonet and shot to death by Islamist insurgents — “We came, we saw, he died!", provides us with a really interesting window on this lady's thought process.

This very much reminds me of a line from the now-cancelled, but brilliant and iconic show, "Elementary", where the Sherlock character is telling the Watson character that his father "had assassins on speed dial."

One has to wonder, given that this is the only couple in American politics with a known "dead bodies list" if that might be true for Arkansas'geopolitical "Gruesome Twosome", Bill and Hillary Clinton.

At any time for nearly four years as many as 14,000 Sudanese militiamen have been fighting in Yemen in tandem with the local militia aligned with the Saudis, according to several Sudanese fighters who have returned and Sudanese lawmakers who are attempting to track it. Hundreds, at least, have died there.

Almost all the Sudanese fighters appear to come from the battle-scarred and impoverished region of Darfur, where some 300,000 people were killed and 1.2 million displaced during a dozen years of conflict over diminishing arable land and other scarce resources.

Some families are so eager for the money that they bribe militia officers to let their sons go fight. Many are ages 14 to 17. In interviews, five fighters who have returned from Yemen and another about to depart said that children made up at least 20 percent of their units. Two said children were more than 40 percent.

Webmaster's Commentary:

And the Saudi government and military, are completely happy with this arrangement?!?

And the US military chain of command is perfectly morally comfortable, knowing that kids are fighting in this genocide the Saudi Saudi Arabian are creating in Yemen?!?

Of course, perhaps, to both the Saudis and the US forces assisting them, because they are from another country, they are simply considered "collateral damage", and the decision has been made that it is better that Houthis kill these kids, rather than Saudi or US nationals.

This only adds to my disgust, at the reality that the US military is enabling Saudi war crimes in Yemen.

Among the more notable geopolitical events that took place last week, and which was swept away by the chaos in the capital markets, was Thursday's surprising announcement of a Saudi cabinet reshuffle that moved around some of the key players in the Khashoggi murder scandal (most notably the chief Saudi diplomat, Adel al-Jubeir) and removed Prince Mohammed bin Nawaf al Saud as the Kingdom's ambassador to the UK.

As a result of the reshuffle, more liberals and progressives will move into positions of power, suggesting that it could be part of the Kingdom's plan to move ahead with its 'liberalizing' reforms to try and rehabilitate MbS's tarnished reputation as a reformer. Amid the reshuffle, the king also ordered the creation of a new political and security council (presumably to help protect his chosen successor's flank) and - in a move that is reminiscent of a controversial decision made by President Trump this year - establishes a new Saudi space agency.

Webmaster's Commentary:

I would suggest that ultimately, the writers of Middle Eastern history will not be terribly kind to Prince Mohammed bin Salman; and this arrest, coupled with the debacle which is the Saudi genocide in Yemen, will make these changes in personnel somewhat akin to re-arranging the deck chairs on what has now become the "H.M.S. Salmanic"

Because he was born into the opulent wealth for which the Royal House of Saud is known, there may be many honorifics by which he is frequently addressed; but the title I think will stick, long after his death, is that of "The Butcher of Yemen."

The U.S. Navy is preparing to take a page from its South China Sea strategy with plans to eventually carry out “freedom of navigation” missions through the Arctic as the geopolitical scramble for dominance heats up while long iced-in sea passages thaw.

Although the goal will be to send a clear signal to Russia and China that America is a force to be reckoned with in the race to control valuable territory at the top of the world, Pentagon leaders acknowledge that it could take years, and they stress that Washington has a lot of catching up to do.

President Donald Trump’s announcement of an imminent withdrawal of US troops from northeastern Syria summoned a predictable paroxysm of outrage from Washington’s foreign policy establishment. Former Secretary of State and self-described “hair icon” Hillary Clinton perfectly distilled the bipartisan freakout into a single tweet, accusing Trump of “isolationism” and “playing into Russia and Iran’s hands.”

Currently, the Syrian Army has deployed around the city saying it stands ready to protect it from nearby pro-Turkish forces. This as the Syrian Arab Army announced it "raised the flag of the Syrian Arab Republic there" as confirmed by Russian television footage from on the ground.

Meanwhile the local MMC, or SDF Manbij Military Council appears to still maintain authority in the city in coordination with the Syrian Army. There appears a quiet status quo and possible indirect negotiations happening between US, SDF, and Syrian Army forces, with broader negotiations between Turkey and Russia — the latter which controls the airspace above the province.

On the ground there's a tense and potentially volatile yet still stable situation still holding, reflected in the following interesting scenario:

Webmaster's Commentary:

Praying for peace to break out here, any moment.

And Turkey has been very clearly warned by the Russians that any attempt at a military operation here, might go down very, very poorly.

Were I Erdogan, I would be listening, very clearly, to what Russia has to say.

The Democrats have an interest in the vilification of Russia as “Russiagate” explains Hillary’s loss of the 2016 Presidential election and gives Democrats hope of removing President Trump from office. The media lacks independence, knowledge, and integrity and is the tool used by the military/security complex to control explanations, a prostitution of the media that has made the term “presstitutes” an accurate description. As strategic and Russian studies are largely funded by the military/security complex, the universities are also complicit in the march toward nuclear war. Republicans are as dependent as Democrats on funding from the military/security complex and the Israel Lobby.

The mainstream media has attacked President Donald Trump’s decision to withdraw U.S. troops from Syria as impulsive, blindsiding his own national security team. But detailed, published accounts of the policy process over the course of the year tell a very different story. They show that senior national security officials and self-interested institutions have been playing a complicated political game for months aimed at keeping Trump from wavering on our indefinite presence on the ground in Syria.

The entire episode thus represents a new variant of a familiar pattern dating back to Vietnam in which national security advisors put pressure on reluctant presidents to go along with existing or proposed military deployments in a war zone. The difference here is that Trump, by publicly choosing a different policy, has blown up their transparent schemes and offered the country a new course, one that does not involve a permanent war state.

Webmaster's Commentary:

On this issue, I give President Trump an absolute thumbs up.

NOW, I need to see what he is really ready and able to do to ratchet down tensions between the US and Russia, the US and China, and the US and Iran!!

A former Israeli armed forces chief who opinion polls show poses the toughest challenge to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s bid for reelection next year formally established a political party on Thursday.

Details about Benny Gantz’s Israel Resilience Party, leaked to local media after it was registered, gave little indication of its ideological tilt.

Along with preserving Israel as “a Jewish and democratic country”, the party pledged unspecified changes to priorities in national security and the economy.

Webmaster's Commentary:

Were I an Israeli voter, I would want to know, first and foremost, what his position on the Palestinians and Palestinian statehood.

Donald Trump is the Ugly American incarnate. More so than even Dick Cheney or George Bush the Younger. His boorish manners and in-your-face self-promotion puts to shame the servile European, Japanese and other spittle-lickers who have profited from their associations with Washington at the expense of their compatriots. These would-be friends of Washington have nowhere to hide from the disgrace Trump metes out to them before their own peoples. All of this is good and necessary medicine to set the world on its way towards a multipolar future. Far more than we “American dissidents” have been able to muster.

Therefore, I can only say “godspeed” to Donald Trump in the New Year 2019. May he willy-nilly continue to do God’s work.

Webmaster's Commentary:

As a Christian pacifist activist, I have to confess; I do have a hug and a punch (more like a gentle tapping, nothing hurt) relationship with this President.

I am very morally concerned about how the US military's aided and abetted Saudi war crimes in Yemen, to which President Trump is particularly tone-deaf, when thousands of innocents have been murdered.

I am very hopeful, that this drawdown in Syria will make it possible for the country to return to some kind of normalcy, and all the rebuilding help it can get.

But getting immigration completely legal again; this is an area where I share President Trump's agenda. I love people, and agree that having good people immigrate to our country who have skills, and embrace the American ethos, is a wonderful thing. Please, just let them come legally, and healthy, is all I am asking.

I love those words, written by Emily Lazarus, emblazoned on plaque placed on the Stature of Liberty;

The issues here are that, A, we're living in the 21st century, and B, technology has taken over, big time, for what used to be done by unskilled labor.

OK, illegal immigrants have no money; they cannot speak the language of the country in which they want to live;; and may be desperately ill with diseases the US has barely seen in recent years, and have zero relevant job skills but expect that the US government is supposed to take care of you?!?

The article goes on to question: "What are the facts behind the economic impact of illegal immigrants? We checked his (Trump's) figures with immigration and tax policy experts across the political spectrum,who said he was exaggerating, at best.

Oh, Really?!?

"A little high," said Robert Rector, a senior research fellow with the Heritage Foundation.

Rector said his 2013 estimate pegged the cost of undocumented immigrants — the cost of services received minus their tax contributions — was about $54 billion a year.

A precise cost is nearly impossible to ascertain, many experts said. That's in part because undocumented immigrants operate within the shadows, leaving their full fiscal contributions — and use of taxpayer-funded resources — at least somewhat unknown.

"It's really hard to calculate anyone’s 'net cost' or 'net benefit.' We all use all kinds of services, from roads to military protection. How do we apportion what part of that is something I or you or an immigrant use?" said Kallick.

But let's say, for the sake of argument, the cost, currently, is around, +/- $54 billion; but that, in my world, is $54 billion too much, with our homeless Vets living rough in our streets, and our infrastructure crumbling, and there being "allegedly" no money to fix it.

I am very glad President Trump is attempting to do something about this, and the Dementocrats are looking, like disgruntled, petulant juveniles, through refusing the funding for a security wall at the border between the US and Mexico.

Persistent media reports that President Trump has ordered a drawdown from Afghanistan, with either 5,000 or 7,000 troops returning home, seemed more or less confirmed. Despite this, some of the highest ranking Pentagon officials claim to know nothing about it.

Visiting Camp Dahlke West, Gen. Joe Dunford, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, shrugged off the reports when talking to troops, saying “there’s all kinds of rumors swirling around,” but that the mission was unchanged.

This comes after the commander in Afghanistan, Gen. Scott Miller, said he’d received no orders on any drawdown yet. Miller has followed that up by saying the fighting will continue until there is a political settlement.

Webmaster's Commentary:

Whoa, there; did I just hear the words "political settlement" come out of General Miller's mouth in that last statement, rather than stating that a military victory is imminent?!?

Color me ever so slightly, possibly, hopeful on Afghanistan for the first time in one long time.

In two recent articles in the Los Angeles Times and the academic studies that inspired them, the authors investigate the question of which war veterans are most likely to commit suicide or violent crimes. Remarkably, the subject of war, their role in war, their thoughts about the supposed justifications (or lack thereof) of a war, never come up.

In The Imperial Presidency, the historian Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr. warned that the habit of “indiscriminate global intervention, far from strengthening American security, seemed rather to weaken it by involving the United States in remote, costly and mysterious wars, fought in ways that shamed the nation before the world and, even when thus fought, demonstrating only the inability of the most powerful nation on earth to subdue bands of guerrillas in black pajamas. When the grandiose policy did not promote national security and could not succeed in its own terms, would it not be better to pursue policies that did not deform and disable the Constitution?”

These many years later, America is complicit in a mysterious war in Yemen that is waged by Saudi Arabia in ways that shame both of our allied nations. These famine-ravaged youngsters are what that war looks like. As Nicholas Kristof aptly put it, “Your tax dollars help starve children.”

Webmaster's Commentary:

I am getting just a little sick to my stomach, reading that last paragraph; I did not know (but am not at all surprised) that President Trump had a number of business deals with the Saudis before he came into office.

Mr. President, as long as I am breathing, I am compelled, as a Christian pacifist activist who never commends violence, to call you out on the US military assisting the Saudi Government in war crimes. And I am about to post some images the presstitutes in corporate media don't dare (warning: very graphic), and not a one of them has been photoshopped or altered in any way.

The Saudis are slaughtering innocent children, women, and the medically infirm.

Mr. President; I must ask this question: I know US weapons manufacturers are selling American bombs to the Saudis, and making incredible profits from this, but at what moral cost to this nation?!?

I was hoping in 2016 that the next President this country elected, would not sign off on more war crimes, as did your predecessors Bush and Obama, starting with Afghanistan; Iraq; Libya; Yemen; and Syria, did; it very much pains me to say it, but sir, in your haste to make sure American weapons manufacturers could profit brilliantly from wars in places like Yemen, you have placed an indelible, moral crimson stain over this entire country's future which can never be cleansed.

And as you are caterwauling over your "great success" in having American ambassadors push their host countries into "buying American" when it comes to weaponry, I hope you can sleep without seeing those images of the dead, the dying,and the maimed for life, which I have attached above; because Mr. President, I cannot sleep because of this, nor can many of the good moral people who elected you, understanding very clearly, that these weapons are causing the deaths of so many innocents.

The national security adviser expanded U.S. goals in Syria to challenge Iran. But Trump wasn’t on board, senior officials say, and Turkey took an opportunity to push the U.S. out.

The national security adviser expanded U.S. goals in Syria to challenge Iran. But Trump wasn’t on board, senior officials say, and Turkey took an opportunity to push the U.S. out.

Some leading Pentagon officials were uncomfortable with Bolton’s anti-Iran goals in Syria. Days after Bolton’s statement, senior Pentagon officials signaled to Congress that they weren’t on board. “In Syria, our role is to defeat ISIS. That’s it,” Brig. Gen. Scott Benedict, an officer on the Joint Staff, testified to the House Armed Services Committee.

Webmaster's Commentary:

If President Trump has been made to realize what an absolutely ham-fistedly, pig-headedly stupid Syrian policy Bolton crafted, leaving President Trump with little to zero option in Syria but to withdraw, will someone who has his ear, please, encourage the President to take a look, hard, long look at the Iranian foreign policy Bolton (and Israel's Prime Minister Netanyahu) want him to pursue?

And also, 2020 being an election year, how, in the name of Heaven, does he believe he can sell yet another Middle East war to the American people, who have become very skeptical about the existing US-generated wars, which continue to go horrendously badly, and war weary,with the uncomfortable sense that if sanctions will not bring the Iranians "to their knees" economically and geopolitically, that he is considering attacking Iran?

And again, I find it interesting that President Trump's BFFs in the Middle East; The Butcher of Yemen, Prince bin Salman, and the Butcher of Gaza, Israel's Prime Minister Netanyahu.

And I have to wonder; is it because these people can order singular, or multiple assassinations with impunity, and not be held responsible for what they have done?

The US withdrawal from Syria includes the withdrawal from the remote US military base at al-Tanf, and that’s got some of the rebel factions in the southeastern area around the base wondering what comes next.

Reporters say that many of the rebels are openly saying that they intend to lay down their arms and surrender as soon as the US leaves al-Tanf, and try to join into one of the Syrian government’s reconciliation offer.

On the other hand, commanders from the US-backed Mahavir al-Saura brigade are looking for life after the US by issuing a demand for Syria to grant them safe passage for 6,000 fighters into the rebel-held northern Syria area around Idlib.

Webmaster's Commentary:

So these jihadists are "demanding" safe passage from the Syrian government to get 6,000 fighters out of harm's way, after fighting the Syria, Russia, and Iranian military?!?

Were I part of the leadership of Mahavir al-Saura, I would seriously not be holding my breath that this would happen.

Moscow called on Ukraine and its Western partners to abandon the new attempt to send naval ships through the Kerch Strait.

At a press briefing, the spokesperson of the Russian Foreign Ministry, Maria Zakharova, called the possible passage of Ukrainian ships through the Kerch Strait "a reckless initiative", RIA Novosti reports.

Zakharova also noted that the "Western supervisors" of Kyiv should come up with a way of "reasoning with the ruling regime" in Ukraine in order to make them abandon the steps that could lead to escalation in the region.

According to Zakharova, the Russian Foreign Ministry believes that Ukraine’s plans to make a new attempt to send warships through the Kerch Strait are nothing more than a "provocation" in which Kyiv plans to involve NATO and the OSCE.

"Apparently, the recent incident with Ukrainian sailors, who became hostages of the aggressive policy of Kyiv authorities, did not teach anyone anything," Zakharova added.

It appears that the US, NATO, and Ukraine, are hell-bent on causing a disturbance here, over Russia's response to Ukrainian military having not followed protocol about informing Russia that these ships were on their way ahead of time.

And further incidents in Kerch Strait, by Ukrainian, US, or NATO craft, may well be interpreted, and rightly so, as an act of war by Russia.

I am hoping (and praying) that the adults in the room in Brussels, Kiev, and DC, will have the horse-sense to back off here; the consequences of not doing so, may well lead to a world war.

I perceive that Putin is a cautious man, and will not take the first step toward a potential war; but there is a point past which he, and the Russian government, cannot be pushed without having to retaliate.

I hope that those clamoring for such an incident to happen, are absolutely, dead certain, of precisely where that point would be, in such a scenario, because I am absolutely not sure.

Turkey-backed rebel fighters in Syria are gearing up for a major deployment into northeastern Syria, with an eye on replacing the US ground troops in the area. Turkey is planning to invade in the course of this replacement, and is coordinating with the US and the pullout and deployment.

President Trump has said the withdrawal will be “slow,” and there has been no public timetable on troop movements. The rebels in question, however, are moving closer to the city of Manbij, which Turkey has indicated will be the first target.

Turkish FM Mevlut Cavusoglu addressed the situation in comments to reporters on Tuesday, saying that while the timeline of deployment may be related to coordination with the US, Turkey remains “determined” to expel the Kurds from Syria’s northeast.

Webmaster's Commentary:

To where, please is Turkish FM Cavusoglu "determined" to expel the Kurds from Syria's Northeast?

I think the short, honest answer is, to the kingdom of genocide and slaughter, given the opportunity,given the reality that the Kurds are on both Turkey's and the US's terror watch list.

However, there was something President Trump said at Ramstein, which rather unnerved me, and it has taken time to find, because it has been nearly completely obliterated by most of the coverage of President and Mrs.Trump's trips to Iraq and Germany, given by the presstitutes. And bless "thelocal.de, for reporting it: https://www.thelocal.de/20181227/trumps-surprise-visit-to-germany

The statement is as follows:

"On Wednesday, Trump said "we've knocked them out," although he appeared to hedge his bets – following widespread criticism that his victory declaration is premature – when he added that Iraq might be used as a future base "if we wanted to do something in Syria".

This to me, begs the question: are some of the US military about to be tactically redeployed in Iraq, for some future attack against Syria, and is that statement supposed to "prep" the American people for its happening, shortly down the road?!?

President Trump may well believe he has time to make his case for this, in terms of more troops in Iraq, because the Iraqi government has become paralyzed between two Shiia Factions, as reported earlier this month by Reuters: Shi'ite rivalry paralyzes Iraq's government

But the question is, how long can he wait, if the war in Syria does not go the way he wants, even with the upcoming Turkish intervention?!?

Is the Turkish government looking to annex those areas of Syria's northeast?!?

We will have to see, as the situation unfolds; Israel, of course, is always the wild card here, and I am hoping (and praying) that the Russians, generally the adults in the room in the world of geopolitics, will have a calming effect long-term.

Fifteen years ago, NATO was bombing Yugoslavia. This may be difficult for people to grasp who believe the Noah movie is historical fiction, but: What your government told you about the bombing of Kosovo was false. And it matters.

While Rwanda is the war that many misinformed people wish they could have had (or rather, wish others could have had for them), Yugoslavia is the war they’re glad happened — at least whenever World War II really fails as a model for the new war they’re after — in Syria for instance, or in Ukraine — the latter being, like Yugoslavia, another borderland between east and west that is being taken to pieces.

“Duty, honor, country” is the motto of the U.S. Military Academy in West Point, New York. Contrast that with the Pentagon’s response to its first attempted audit after almost three decades of requests: “We failed the audit, but we never expected to pass it,” said Patrick Shanahan, the current deputy secretary of defense who will assume the title of acting defense secretary starting Jan. 1.

This nonchalant, arrogant dismissal of gross accounting errors and fraud is an embarrassment to American exceptionalism and the proud history of the U.S. armed forces.

Shanahan’s glib response indicates a condescension towards accountability and a tolerance for mediocrity that erodes the nobility of the five service branches. The audit only came after “years of hard-core foot-dragging” and “internal resistance,” according to Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa).

On Thursday, President Donald Trump announced via Twitter that Secretary of Defense James “Mad Dog” Mattis would be “retiring” in February and that a replacement for Mattis would soon be named. Mattis’ departure had been the subject of speculation since late June, when it was reported that Mattis was already being kept out of the loop on major administration decisions such as the unilateral withdrawal from the Iran nuclear deal, which Mattis had supported keeping intact. Rumors of Mattis’ exit as the Pentagon’s top official were then revived in September when it was reported that Trump was “actively discussing” his replacement.

China has brought to market a hypersonic anti-ship ballistic missile, said to be the first of its kind on the international market for buyers seeking a "reliable and affordable deterrence against threats from the sea," according to China.org.

"The system is intended for rapid and precision strikes against medium-size ships, naval task forces, and offshore facilities," said a representative from China Aerospace Science and Industry Corp (CASIC) in November.

According to CASIC, the CM-401 is fitted with a terminal radar guidance unit featuring a nose-mounted gimballed antenna. Once launched, the missile flies along a ballistic trajectory, reaching a near-space altitude. The weapon is stated to have an average speed of Mach 4 and a peak of Mach 6, although it is not clear at what altitudes these speeds are reached. -Janes.com

On September 10, 2001 Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld went on CBS Evening News and admitted that the Pentagon (under the Clinton regime) had spent $2.3 trillion but had no idea where the money went. He promised the American taxpayers that the money was well spent but we just didn’t know where it was. And he promised to improve both the bureaucratic and accounting procedures at the Pentagon so they taxpayers would know their money was being well looked after.

17 years after Rumsfeld pledged to improve DOD budgetary controls, Dr Mark Skidmore, who normally worked with state government accounts where occasionally he found that someone spent as much as $300 without getting a receipt, decided to investigate claims that billions and even trillions had gone missing from federal departments.

Islamic State-trained militants are fighting alongside a state army in a European country, the Times reports – but that detail is buried in an article talking about how Putin is a common enemy of Ukrainians and Chechens.
Framed as an inside look at what’s driving Chechens to join Kiev’s “anti-terrorist operation” against the breakaway republics in the east of Ukraine, the Times article has a few juicy quotes from one Mansur, a member of a voluntary battalion made up of Chechens.

Putin is our common enemy… He brings only evil.

Author and veteran anti-Putin writer Marc Bennetts echoes the official message of Kiev and its Western allies, calling the eastern Ukrainian rebels “Kremlin-backed” and claiming Moscow is “preparing a full-scale invasion.”

Webmaster's Commentary:

I hope that the Ukrainian government, NATO, which is equipping and training jihadists, and the US government are watching these relationships very closely; it is very possible that the Chechen fighters here have other agendas, perhaps like breaking away from Russia at some point, and declaring itself a republic.

US President Donald Trump said he's not planning to take American troops out of Iraq as he made his first visit to an active combat zone. His surprise trip also sparked online frenzy after his plane had been noticed over Europe.
Speaking at Al Asad Air Base west of Baghdad, Trump defended his decision to withdraw troops from Syria last week.

"I think a lot of people are going to come around to my way of thinking. It's time for us to start using our head," the president said. “In fact we could use this as the base if we wanted to do something in Syria," he added.

Webmaster's Commentary:

I am having a Jean-Luc Picard double face-palm, at warp speed, upon reading this.

So, the alleged "pulling out of US troops from Syria" was not so much a withdrawal, as a repositioning of troops in Iraq, for future US campaigns in Syria?!?!?

We’re discussing particulars and what is in place now, as we speak. In Northeastern Syria, Special Forces teams as well as CIA and other clandestine service operatives have been deeply embedded since the Obama years. Now the plug has been pulled, and all of the intricate networks that have been obtained in the area are to be curtailed. Whether a shadow-presence will be left there is likely, although conjecture at this point, but Mattis’ reaction and resignation is, most likely at a minimum, twofold:

In consideration of what I just wrote, no Commander-in-Chief is privy to every motion that transpires within a given theater…and tactically, Mattis probably does not agree with the rapidity of the curtailment, from both an operational perspective.

Webmaster's Commentary:

Please, folks, I do NOT want to win the title "Chicken Little for 2019", but please take a look at the what seems like a major convergence of many factors coming to play, simultaneously.

As I wrote in a previous post today:

"President Erdogan is threatening war against Greece; President Trump is consumed by his demand that the Democrats give him money for the wall between the US and Mexico, so the American Congress is in partial shutdown; Israel is planning a major military campaign against Syria, and/or Lebanon; Turkey has declared its own war on Syria, and most Americans are in a tryptophan coma from too much turkey celebrating Christmas, and won't recover from their slumbers until well after the New Year."

As this article states: "Vladimir Putin reported at a conference packed with journalists that he believes the U.S. and Russia are headed toward a nuclear war. While he said he didn’t wish it, he reiterated that Russia will fight if it has to."

Please, if you are not prepped at this moment, now would be a darn good time to start. This means potable water, extra food, meds, first aid kits, and a bugout kit, if you need to run to a place previously vetted as the most safe and protected.

Find people in your neighborhood with whom you feel safe, with whom you can barter, and create community.

The one issue on which Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and his opposition are in "complete agreement" is the "conviction that the Greek islands are occupied Turkish territory and must be reconquered."

"So strong is this determination that the leaders of both parties have openly threatened to invade the Aegean." – Uzay Bulut, Turkish journalist.

Ankara's ongoing challenges to Greek land and sea sovereignty are additional reasons to keep it from enjoying full acceptance in Europe and the rest of the West.

According to a recent statement from Greece's Ministry of Foreign Affairs:

"Greek-Turkish disputes over the Aegean continental shelf date back to November 1973, when the Turkish Government Gazette published a decision to grant the Turkish national petroleum company permits to conduct research in the Greek continental shelf west of Greek islands in the Eastern Aegean.

Webmaster's Commentary:

So, this is really about oil, and who gets to develop it?!?

And Turkey is threatening Greece with war, if it won't release these islands to Turkish sovereignty?!?

Edrogan is just crazy enough to believe that his military can, and should do this, and that such an action may well be timed for a quick deployment. Why do I say this?!?

Just look at the following, all happening so closely in time right now.

President Trump is consumed by his demand that the Democrats give him money for the wall between the US and Mexico, so the American Congress is in partial shutdown; Israel is planning a major military campaign against Syria, and/or Lebanon; Turkey has declared its own war on Syria, and most Americans are in a tryptophan coma from too much turkey celebrating Christmas, and won't recover from their slumbers until well after the New Year.

New Year comes this year on next Tuesday; and if I were a betting person, I would almost be willing to bet that we will probably be seeing major events and military encounters by that point in time.

Washington's decision to drop out of the INF has fueled speculation about the return of a full-blown, Cold-War style nuclear arms race, as Russia has reflexively threatened to build up its tactical defenses along Europe's periphery in the face of what's expected to be a buildup of American intermediate-range arms.

But whatever happens between the two nuclear superpowers, Germany wants no part of it.

German Foreign Minister Heiko Maas warned this week that the US better not be thinking about stationing its intermediate-range missiles in Germany - or anywhere in Europe, for that matter. For the last 30 years, the treaty has prohibited stationing intermediate-range arms in Europe. Any push to change that would almost certainly be met with "widespread resistance" in Germany, Maas said, so as to avoid a scenario where Europe is put in the middle of a tug-of-war between Russia and the US.

Webmaster's Commentary:

I have to admire this guy for really having the "male attributes" to say "NO!" to any positioning of the new medium-range missiles in Germany.

“the United States’ withdrawal from Syria greatly increases the likelihood of a large-scale conflict in the north, whether in Lebanon or Syria”.

Lieberman added that “the Americans’ departure will raise the morale of Syrian President Bashar Al-Assad and his allies, Iran and Lebanese Hezbollah.”

The Russian daily quoted Russian military expert Yuri Liamin as saying that “Iran cannot interpret this decision as a blank cheque”.

Webmaster's Commentary:

I had a nasty feeling in my gut, when Netanyahu dissolved the Knesset, and set a time for snap elections in April, that he was going to use the time in between to wage a significant war against Syria, and/or a war against Iran, with literally no opposition from the Knesset, because it had been dissolved.

There are moments it kinds of bites, being correct on an assessment like this.

And to all my brother and sister Americans, even if you're in a tryptophan coma from too much turkey yesterday, please wake up; because by the time the New Year gets here next week, both the US military and Israel's military may well be at war with Syria, and with Russia throwing its hat into the ring, and siding with Syria.

The Americans wager that they can exercise veto power over African political alignments by force of arms, through AFRICOM’s massive military infiltration of the region.

“The ‘West’s’ political economies are spent forces, incapable of either keeping up with China’s phenomenal domestic growth or of competing with China in what used to be called the Third World.”

Donald Trump last week trotted out his war dog, National Security Advisor John Bolton, to growl and snarl over China’s attempts to “gain a competitive advantage” in Africa through “predatory” practices that supposed include “bribes, opaque agreements, and the strategic use of debt to hold states in Africa captive” to Beijing’s global schemes.

Webmaster's Commentary:

If EVER an administration needed a "Department of Peace", it is right the heck now!!

In looking at the combination of demonization plus sanctions against Russia; China; and Iran, it is very clear to me that the US government is about to sleep-walk this country into wars our military may not be able to win.

And I say this not because I don't care about the future of this country; I say this because I do care about the future of this country, because at this time in US history, our military doesn't have the weaponry; the money; the troop strength; or the manufacturing to insure a positive outcome to a war against China and/or Russia.

Speaking of which, here's a companion story, again out of globalresearch.ca:

In August, 2010, six months before Tunisia’s Jasmine Revolution was launched by the Washington NGOs including the NED, the Soros Foundations, Freedom House and others, President Obama signed Presidential Study Directive-11 (PDS-11), ordering Washington government agencies to prepare for “change.” The change was to be a radical policy calling for Washington’s backing for the secret fundamentalist Islamic Muslim Brotherhood sect across the Middle East Muslim world, and with it, the unleashing of a reign of terror that would change the entire world.

According to US Congressional testimony of Peter Hoekstra, former Chairman of the US House of Representatives Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, the Obama Administration PSD-11 directive–as of March 2017 still classified Top Secret–“ordered a government-wide reassessment of prospects for political reform in the Middle East and of the Muslim Brotherhood’s role in the process. “

A Grandiose Task Force

Webmaster's Commentary:

If, in fact, this information is true,it looks like here's another alleged "Nobel Peace Prize Winner" who should be forced to have that honor pulled, quickly, and for darn good reason.

By tapping former Boeing executive Patrick Shanahan to temporarily replace famed former Marine Gen. James Mattis as secretary of defense, President Trump may have found a like-minded advocate for the U.S. weapons industry.

Shanahan is a controversial choice. During Shanahan's two-year stint as Mattis's deputy defense secretary, Boeing has landed a series of lucrative military contracts worth $20 billion, on top of the Chicago company's previous deal to build aerial-refueling tankers and naval fighters for the Pentagon.

Mattis' resignation on Thursday came one day after Trump announced, via Twitter, that the terror group known as Islamic State is no longer a threat and the United States will withdraw all 2,000 of its troops from Syria.

Blackwater, the controversial US private security firm, has flagged its intent to resume business, taking out a full-page commercial in the latest edition of Recoil magazine with a chilling message declaring “We are coming.”
The resurrection within the military contractors’ market of notorious Blackwater, which, after numerous scandals and several rebrandings, is now known as Academi, has analysts looking deeper into US intent to withdraw from the wars in the Middle East. The advertisement in Recoil, made public after Defense Secretary Jim Mattis announced his resignation, prompted concerns that president Donald Trump might be seeking to privatize ongoing American engagements in Afghanistan and Syria, following the declared troops' withdrawal from the region.

Webmaster's Commentary:

President Trump, a word, please.

Privatizing as many wars as we are fighting right now, would be an horrific decision.

Even privatizing one of them may well result in creating a failed nation-state, as the US and NATO did with Libya.

We know that many of these wars were handed over from your predecessor, President Obama, who told adoring campaign crowds that he would bring our troops home, when he knew, at some level, that this statement was a bold-faced lie.

So the question you should be asking yourself right now is, how to honorably extricate the US government from the commitment to these wars, like Afghanistan, and Yemen, which you inherited from President Obama?!?

As I have said many times, regarding Afghanistan, it would make every bit of sense for the US/NATO troops to be evacuated as quickly as is safely possible, then negotiate with whatever government is left standing in Kabul for the oil pipeline rights; the rare earth minerals rights; and the opium poppy rights. It is common knowledge that a number of US "alphabet soup agencies" are making a killing, literally, and figuratively, from the sale of the cheap, strong heroin.

So I must ask; upon seeing these images for the first time, and perhaps having your own "Saul on the Road to Damascus moment", how is it that absolutely no one around you happened to mention this reality to you?!?

Then sir, if the people around you, who seem to have both "your back" and your ears haven't mentioned this, perhaps it is high time for a re-think about who you can trust, or not trust, and right the heck right now.

The future of this country depends upon it.

Now, as to Yemen; I know that one of your two BFFs in the region, Prince Bin Salman, AKA the Butcher of Yemen, is insistent on a military victory against the Houthi rebels, no matter what the cost.

But the costs to the Yemeni people have been bitterly severe, including:

1. Women and children, and the medically fragile getting blown to bits, courtesy of Saudi bombings, which the US military is assisting. Markets, hospitals and schools are blown up, with impunity, courtesy of Saudi bombing runs.

2. There is rampant malnutrition, due to the fact that the US military is assisting Saudi military personnel blocking Yemen's ports , to insure no food gets to the starving people.

3. There is rampant cholera in Yemen (possibly weaponised and from the US government), courtesy of Saudi bombing runs against their water infrastructure, and the death toll is horrific.

President Trump, we understand that you believe "war is good for US business", because just about the only things governments want to buy from us are our weapons; but sir, in looking at the reality that the US military, in aiding and abetting Saudi war crimes in Yemen, makes the US government complicit in these war crimes, at what moral cost to the country are we doing this?!?

You need to call the Butcher of Yemen, apologise to him, and tell him,

"Look Prince, the whole Yemen situation is about to go public, big-time, so the US military is going to have to "pack it in" long before the election happens.

Sorry about that; but I have to make sure that American's SMD, selective memory disorder, kicks in around June of next year, so that this whole "Yemen thing" will be forgotten. You understand, right?!?"

Today, total international trade in arms is worth about $100bn a year, according to Pieter Wezemen, senior researcher at the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (Sipri).

With military power as the backbone of foreign policy and the central strategy for economic gains, the volume of international transfers of major weapons has been growing steadily over the past 15 years.
Based on Andrew Feinstein's book, The Shadow World: Inside the Global Arms Trade, this film reveals some of the largest and most corrupt arms deals in history.

The UK is the largest arms producer in Western Europe and it's also a top exporter of arms to Saudi Arabia. The most notable deal between the UK and Saudi Arabia is the Al-Yamamah arms deal in which the British Weapons Manufacturer BAE Systems was the main contractor. The first sales took place in September 1985.

Redeploying US combat troops from column A to column B, from one nation to another, from one war theater to one or more others nearby, leaves Washington’s imperial agenda unchanged – its rage for world dominance, its naked aggression against one nation after another, the highest of high crimes.

That’s the key issue the hue and cry over Trump’s announced troop pullout from Syria and partial withdrawal from Afghanistan left unaddressed.

Republicans and undemocratic Dems are in lockstep over Washington’s aim to rule the world, wanting all nations co-opted as vassal states, allies and adversaries alike, their resources handed to corporate America for looting, their people exploited as serfs.

The beat goes on. Trump’s announcement changed nothing. First, it’s unclear what’s coming in Syria and Afghanistan in the new year – maybe continuation of the status quo or minor tactical changes.

Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., on Sunday praised President Donald Trump for doing “exactly what he promised” by withdrawing U.S. troops from Syria — and derided the “armchair generals” in Washington who “want to keep us at war forever.”

In an interview on CNN’s “State of the Union,” Paul said he’s “very proud” of Trump’s determination to get troops out of the Middle East.

Mattis' resignation comes amid news that President Donald Trump has directed the drawdown of 2,000 U.S. forces in Syria, and 7,000 U.S. forces from Afghanistan, a U.S. official confirmed to Military Times, a story first reported by the Wall Street Journal.

This month, in the January/February print issue of the gun and hunting magazine “Recoil," the former contractor security firm Blackwater USA published a full-page ad, in all black with a simple message: “We are coming.”

Is the war in Afghanistan — and possibly elsewhere ? about to be privatized?

China has rolled out its latest combat drone for its first public flight, after Beijing released footage of the Wing Loong I-D combat unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV), which can carry over 10 different types of weapons (up to 881 lbs) and operate up to 35 continuous hours without refueling.

It is China's first all-composite unmanned aerial vehicle, which Beijing plans to sell to customers worldwide, according to Sina news.

the Pterosaur-1D is basically compatible with most of the pterosaur-1/2 weapons, including the BA-7 air-to-ground missile, the YZ-212 laser-guided bomb, the YZ-102A killing bomb and the 50 kg LS-. 6 miniature guided bombs -Sina (translated)

Leave it to liberals to pin their hopes on the oddest things. In particular, they seemed to find post-Trump solace in the strange combination of the two-year-old Mueller investigation and the good judgment of certain Trump appointees, the proverbial “adults in the room.” Remember that crew? It once included Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, the former ExxonMobil CEO, and a trio of active and retired generals -- so much for civilian control of the military -- including Secretary of Defense Jim Mattis, National Security Advisor H.R. McMaster, and White House Chief of Staff John Kelly. Until his sudden resignation, Mattis was (just barely) the last man standing. Still, for all these months, many Americans had counted on them to all but save the nation from an unpredictable president. They were the ones supposedly responsible for helming (or perhaps hemming in) the wayward ship of state when it came to foreign and national security policy.

My great great grampa fought at Gettysburg with the 6th Virginia Infantry Regiment,Army of Northern Virginia,General Robert E. Lee commanding.They were assigned the job of guarding Lee's artillery or I probably would not be here.

LOUISVILLE, Ky. (WHAS11) -- One hundred and fifty-six years ago, America was ripped apart by the greatest conflict it had ever seen. Two years into the Civil War there was no end in sight, and rebel forces were making headway.

The Battle of Gettysburg was the high-water mark of the Confederacy, as General Robert E. Lee marched northward through the Shenandoah Valley with designs on penetrating deep into Pennsylvania.

Over the course of three days, Union and Confederate armies suffered between 46,000 and 51,000 casualties, making Gettysburg the most costly battle in U.S. history.

BEIRUT (AP) — Warplanes flying over Lebanon fired missiles toward areas near the Syrian capital of Damascus late Tuesday and some of the missiles were shot down by air defense units, Syrian state TV said. There was no immediate word on casualties.

Retired Gen. James Mattis earned the nickname “Mad Dog” for leading U.S. Marines into battle in Fallujah, Iraq, in April 2004. In that assault, members of the Marine Corps, under Mattis’ command, shot at ambulances and aid workers. They cordoned off the city, preventing civilians from escaping. They posed for trophy photos with the people they killed.

Each of these offenses has put other military commanders and members of the rank and file in front of international war crimes tribunals. The doctrine that landed them there dates back to World War II, when an American military tribunal held Japanese Gen. Tomoyuki Yamashita accountable for war crimes in the Philippines. His execution later was upheld by the U.S. Supreme Court.

During the siege of Fallujah, which I covered as an unembedded journalist, Marines killed so many civilians that the municipal soccer stadium had to be turned into a graveyard.

In November 2005 US marines in Iraq committed a massacre of 24 unarmed Iraqi civilians. The slaughtering of unarmed men, women, children and elderly people, shot multiple times at close range, was retribution for a roadside bomb attack on a convoy of marines. The war crimes were extremely well documented and the atrocity garnered international attention.

When it came time to bring the marines responsible for the massacre to justice, Mattis was the convening authority over the eight charged with crimes at Haditha.

Mattis went on to dismiss all of the charges leveled against the marines who had been accused of killing the civilians and of the eight originally charged, only one still faces possible prosecution, but one can guess how that will end up.

It’s also worth remembering that Mattis is hardy deserving of the respect stowed upon him simply because he’s a military guy. In fact, Mattis very may well have committed war crimes while commanding Marines in Iraq. Per Aaron Glantz, who wrote a retrospective for Reveal when Mattis was first nominated for defense secretary:

Retired Gen. James Mattis earned the nickname “Mad Dog” for leading U.S. Marines into battle in Fallujah, Iraq, in April 2004. In that assault, members of the Marine Corps, under Mattis’ command, shot at ambulances and aid workers. They cordoned off the city, preventing civilians from escaping. They posed for trophy photos with the people they killed.

Nothing unites our political class like the threat of ending our never-ending war ...

So we’re withdrawing troops from the Middle East.

GOOD!

What’s the War on Terror death count by now, a half-million? How much have we spent, $5 trillion? Five-and-a-half?

For that cost, we’ve destabilized the region to the point of abject chaos, inspired millions of Muslims to hate us, and torn up the Geneva Convention and half the Constitution in pursuit of policies like torture, kidnapping, assassination-by-robot and warrantless detention.

It will be difficult for each of us to even begin to part with our share of honor in those achievements. This must be why all those talking heads on TV are going crazy.

Unless Donald Trump decides to reverse his decision to begin withdrawals from Syria and Afghanistan, cable news for the next few weeks is going to be one long Scanners marathon of exploding heads.

Webmaster's Commentary:

The withdrawal from both Syria and the pare-down of troops in Afghanistan, were absolutely the right moves to make right now, however these actually came about.

What do all 17 year old Americans have in common?!? They have never seen a time in their lives, when our country NOT at war with other countries, period, end of discussion.

As we approach 2019 the global economy teeters on the brink of yet another recession which will plunge geo-political relations into a period of great upheaval and rapid change. In 2019 global stock markets will continue to face unprecedented volatility and gigantic losses as the Ponzi scheme pumped up by the cartel of central banks comes crashing down.

The central bank cartel of the U.S. Federal Reserve, European Central Bank, Bank of Japan, and Bank of England together with the Bank of China have flooded their national economies with astronomical sums of money since 2008 in an attempt to stave off collapse of the global financial system.

Their money printing experiment has driven global debt from $177 trillion to over $277 trillion today while interest rates have been artificially suppressed enabling a wealth transfer to the 1% of historic proportions. This massive expansion of central bank balance sheets is illustrated below.

Webmaster's Commentary:

This debt load is totally unsustainable, and there are two possible outcomes which can be seen here; either a complete collapse of the US economy, or a world war.

Thousands of British Armed Forces personnel working around the world have sent Christmas messages home to their loved ones.

UK troops are involved in 35 operations in more than 30 countries from Somalia and South Sudan to Kuwait and Ukraine.

A total of 14 naval vessels will be at sea, from Type 45 Destroyer HMS Dragon in the Gulf to Type 23 Frigate HMS Argyll in the Asia Pacific.

In the South Atlantic, more than 1,000 personnel are stationed in the Falkland Islands along with survey ship HMS Protector whilst in the Caribbean, RFA Mounts Bay has been on alert over the hurricane season.

Two of my section came dashing into the billet during the morning and said, ‘What do you know, the Jerries are out on the top; they’re walking about, they’re dishing out drinks and cigarettes – there’s no fighting going on!

At Christmas 1914, an event occurred that was not repeated again during the First World War. An unofficial, spontaneous truce took place along some parts of the Western Front. It often started with a ceasefire as Christmas Day approached. German Army officer Walther Stennes recalled how, initially, this caused some concern.

On Christmas Eve at noon, fire ceased completely – on both fronts. Of course it was unusual that the opposite side also ceased fire. Then my officer controlling the sentries came in and said ‘Do you expect a surprise attack? Because it’s very unusual the situation.’ I said, ‘No I don’t think so. But anyhow everyone is awake, no one is sleeping and the sentries are still on duty. So I think it’s alright.’

Webmaster's Commentary:

Something to contemplate, as we look at the endless wars the American Deep State and Military Industrial complex have planned for us.

Stephen Cohenreflects on major developments in 2018, in part drawing on themes in his new book War with Russia? From Putin and Ukraine to Trump and Russiagate.

The new Cold War is not a mere replica of its 40-year predecessor, which the world survived. In vital ways, it is more dangerous, more fraught with actual war, as illustrated by events in 2018, among them:

For all of us who worry about misguided groupthink in the Washington foreign policy establishment, the last 24 hours have been validating and demoralizing. The reaction to Trump’s announcement that he will withdraw U.S. forces from Syria has been reflexive horror that Trump is going against the great traditions of U.S. foreign policy. When in fact those traditions are the discredited ideas of liberal interventionists and neoconservatives who (somehow still) believe that the projection of U.S. military force in conflicts far from our shores will make the world a better place. Those ideas aren’t even traditional, but generational, rooted in post-cold war globalist hubris– which Trump promised voters he was going to reverse.

President Trump’s decision to withdraw US troops from Syria is being denounced by an impressive range of critics claiming that it is a surrender to Turkey, Russia, Syria and Iran – as well as a betrayal of the Kurds and a victory for Isis.

The pullout may be one or all of these things, but above all it is a recognition of what is really happening on the ground in Syria and the Middle East in general.

This point has not come across clearly enough because of the undiluted loathing for Trump among most of the American and British media. They act as a conduit for the views of diverse figures who condemn the withdrawal and include members of the imperially-minded foreign policy establishment in Washington and terrified Kurds living in north-east Syria who fear ethnic cleansing by an invading Turkish army.

Leave it to liberals to pin their hopes on the oddest things. In particular, they seemed to find post-Trump solace in the strange combination of the two-year-old Mueller investigation and the good judgment of certain Trump appointees, the proverbial “adults in the room.” Remember that crew? It once included Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, the former ExxonMobil CEO, and a trio of active and retired generals — so much for civilian control of the military — including Secretary of Defense Jim Mattis, National Security Advisor H.R. McMaster, and White House Chief of Staff John Kelly. Until his sudden resignation, Mattis was (just barely) the last man standing. Still, for all these months, many Americans had counted on them to all but save the nation from an unpredictable president. They were the ones supposedly responsible for helming (or perhaps hemming in) the wayward ship of state when it came to foreign and national security policy.

Profit and deception drove cold-war militarization, says Lester Ernest, founder of the Artificial Intelligence Lab at Stanford; Ernest says the anti-nuclear bomber SAGE radar system never worked and carried on for 25 years

China has shown off its latest drone bomber as it releases footage of the unmanned aircraft completing its first flight.

Wing Loong I-D, a type of combat and spy drone, can carry more than 10 different types of weapons and fly up to 35 hours without refuelling.

It is also able to scout information from as high as 7,000 metres (22,965 feet), according to Chinese news site Sina Military.

Webmaster's Commentary:

The problem here, is not that the Chinese military has this weapon, which sounds very formidable indeed; the question which must be raised at this time, is why do American military not have either the equivalent of such a weapon, or better?!?

The resignation of Defence Minister Avigdor Lieberman and the withdrawal of his party from the governing coalition in mid-November left Netanyahu with just a one-seat majority in the Knesset.

Israel will hold a general election on 9 April, a representative of Likud party told Sputnik, adding that the current Knesset convocation would be dissolved by that time. According to Prime Minister Netanyahu, the decision to disband the government was "unanimous".

The announcement came after a meeting of members of the country's Likud-led ruling coalition. According to Haaretz, the coalition failed to agree on the new law on conscripting yeshiva students. Earlier in the day, the Yesh Atid party refused to vote for the bill.

IF the date of 9 April holds for a snap election, look for some horrific "March/April Surprise", generated by the Israeli government, which will force
(or at least, give justification for) a war in which the US must protect its vital "friend" in the Middle East, Israel.

Please remember; the US government, right now, is in a deeply fractured condition, with some at the Deep State level wanting to see a US-led war against Iran right now, to please their Israeli/AIPAC monetary contributors.

This lack of cohesive US vision, coupled with a pathological inability of both sides of the aisle in Congress to agree on anything, particularly when it comes to foreign policy, could potentially mean that Netanyahu could see an opportunity to create a "game changer", with a false flag, which would simultaneously win him the vote in the next election, and extract his revenge on President Trump about the Syrian pullout of US troops.

I don't know about you, but I am going to be paying extraordinarily close attention to what the Israeli government is doing in the next 106 days until that election.

Oh what a lovely big stocking-filler for the Kiev regime this week from Washington. Just in time for Christmas too, and only weeks after President Petro Poroshenko tried to incite a war with Russia from a naval provocation in the Kerch Strait.

First we had US government envoy Kurt Volker announcing this week that an additional $250 million in military weapons were being packaged in Congress for Ukraine. Then the DC-based international lending institutions, the IMF and World Bank, signed off on multi-billion-dollar loans for Poroshenko’s regime.

Webmaster's Commentary:

Folks, this is one of those geopolitical issues, like Yemen, where we need to have a broad-based, fact-centric discussion, right out here in the open, to inquire of our government just what the heck is going on on Ukraine, and why the US government saw fit (under President Obama's watch, I may add)to have its duly elected President, Yanukovych thrown under the proverbial bus so that Poroshenko could be anointed as its saviour.

The US and NATO, invaded Libya in March 2011, and created regime change when
shortly thereafter with his extrajudicial assassination: Never forget why Muammar Gaddafi was killed: href="https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/libya/obamas-libya-debacle">Libya: Obama's debacle

They continue this policy with Bahrain, in supporting the dictatorial monarchy there, whose human rights stance is just to the right of Attila the Hun. Bahrain's silenced revolution

And of course, one of the most current attempts at "intervention and regime change" would be Syria, where, at least, President Trump has had the "come to Logic" moment, and has decided to get our troops out of there. President Trump orders US troop withdrawal from Syria And BTW, please remember: Bashar Al Asad never invited the US troops in the first place; Russia and Iran were invited to assist the the Syrian government with getting out the US funded/trained/equipped jihadis, and they did a wonderful job.

So looking all of this and taking it into consideration how long the US government has been doing this since the end of World War II, one reaches an inescapable conclusion: US military intervention and attempted regime change, is not an aberration for US foreign policy; it has become the norm.

And I would politely caution President Trump that a war against Russia right now, with some kind of "false flag" to be blamed against Russia happening somewhere in Ukraine, would be one of the most pig-headedly, ham-fistedly idiotic things the US government could possibly do right now.

And I say this, because I care very deeply about this country, and the hard, cold reality here, is that this country's military doesn't have the troop strength, the money, the manufacturing, or the weaponry, to insure a positive result of a war against Russia at this time.

AOC tweet, 42,000 retweets, 170,000 likes in 24 hours
Provocative thought, popular, gets your attention
Her Twitter game is seriously strong
She’s tweeting what people are thinking, she has game
POTUS tweet, sets an “elite trap”, Dale explains
Has meat for the haters, humor for the lovers
Persuasive words that slide through cognitive filters
CNN “power ranking” of Democrat Presidential candidates
Kamala and Beto are the top two candidates
CNN is seeking to make Kamala and Beto the candidates
CNN is brainwashing away from top voter preference, Biden
Wikileaks claims General Mattis is planning to run for President
If true, his resignation is timely, strategic
Reportedly, Turkey’s Erdogan on phone, said why are we in Syria?
President Trump put the question to Bolton…
then decided it’s time for us to leave Syria

Open-ended war continuation has so much momentum in the US that President Trump’s announced pullout from Syria shocked the nation. Followed up the same week with a drawdown from Afghanistan, the mainstream is now completely apoplectic.

On the left and right, comfort with the status quo was virtually uniform. The arguments behind condemning the drawdowns vary depending on the side of the aisle the commenter is on, but the message is uniform opposition to ending a war Congress never authorized in the first place.

Conservative hawks are playing the usual fear-mongering about threats that have been ongoing since 2001, with suggestions that either not being in Syria, or being in Afghanistan but at a lower troop number, will lead to “the next 9/11.”

Webmaster's Commentary:

OF COURSE, they are panicked; imagine how much of their collective portfolios are heavily invested in the military industrial complex, and how these withdrawals will affect their collective portfolios!!

The monied LOVE perpetual war (as long as they, themselves are not threatened), because it fattens their collective bottom lines; this is an absolute no-brainer.

In 1974 a notorious cold warrior, Albert Wohlstetter, absurdly accused the CIA of underestimating the Soviet threat. As the CIA had every incentive for reasons of budget and power to overestimate the Soviet threat, and today the “Russian threat,” Wohlstetter’s accusation made no sense on its face. However he succeeded in stirring up enough concern that CIA director George H.W. Bush, later Vice President and President, agreed to a Team B to investigate the CIA’s assessment, headed by the Russiaphobic Harvard professor Richard Pipes. Team B concluded that the Soviets thought they could win a nuclear war and were building the forces with which to attack the US.

The report was mainly nonsense, and it must have have troubled Stephen Cohen to experience the setback to negotiations that Team B caused.

Webmaster's Commentary:

Neither Russia nor Putin are my enemies; lousy, misguided, short-sighted, not-thought -through, dart-board-style US foreign policies threatens me, and my brother and sister Americans, and the future of this country. infinitely more than does Russia or Putin.

In 1974 a notorious cold warrior, Albert Wohlstetter, absurdly accused the CIA of underestimating the Soviet threat. As the CIA had every incentive for reasons of budget and power to overestimate the Soviet threat, and today the “Russian threat,” Wohlstetter’s accusation made no sense on its face. However he succeeded in stirring up enough concern that CIA director George H.W. Bush, later Vice President and President, agreed to a Team B to investigate the CIA’s assessment, headed by the Russiaphobic Harvard professor Richard Pipes. Team B concluded that the Soviets thought they could win a nuclear war and were building the forces with which to attack the US.

The report was mainly nonsense, and it must have have troubled Stephen Cohen to experience the setback to negotiations that Team B caused.

Webmaster's Commentary:

Neither Russia nor Putin are my enemies; lousy, misguided, short-sighted, not-thought -through, dart-board-style US foreign policies threatens me, and my brother and sister Americans, and the future of this country. infinitely more than does Russia or Putin.

If Pristina decides to push the army into northern Kosovo, which is mostly populated by Serbs, Serbia will have to act to protect its people, filmmaker Boris Malagurski told RT.

As the UN Security Council was debating Kosovo’s move to transform its security forces into a professional military on Monday, Russia and Serbia decried the act as being without any legal basis.

“The EU reaction to the decision by Pristina cannot be described as [anything] other than toothless. This irresponsible policy has crossed the line,” Russia’s ambassador to the UN Vassily Nebenzya said after the UNSC meeting.

Hillary Clinton gave a full-throated defense of the war machine Friday on Twitter while attacking President Trump for moving to pull out of Syria.

The Resistance icon said: "Actions have consequences, and whether we’re in Syria or not, the people who want to harm us are there & at war. Isolationism is weakness. Empowering ISIS is dangerous. Playing into Russia & Iran’s hands is foolish. This President is putting our national security at grave risk."

Webmaster's Commentary:

This woman is every US Deep State Warmonger's and military industrial complex's wet dream, and is desperately attempting to capitalize on Trump's pullout of Syria with Netenyahu and his cronies who see US perpetual war in the Middle East, (only to be fought, of course, with American blood and American money) as their only way to to accomplish their goals of complete annihilation of the Palestinian people, and the way forward toward building Eretz Israel.

Sorry, Mrs. Clinton: what may be seen as "good" for Israel, may definitely not good for the future of this country, and you seem pathologically incapable of distinguishing between the two, which means that as President, just as President Trump has done, up until he had that "come to logic moment" on Syria, you will be planning to outsource America's foreign policy in the Middle East to Israel.

This would continue to be immeasurably costly, because as you are well aware, Israel is a nuclear armed country bristling with American made weapons, and has the full capability of defending itself, should something nasty come down against it.

As Thursday’s resignation of widely-respected US Secretary of Defense James Mattis sends shockwaves throughout the global military community, government officials and political experts from around the world are voicing concern about an increasingly reckless commander-in-chief.

Even measured against the standards of US President Donald Trump's first two years, it has been a turbulent week in DC, as lawmakers, pundits and experts scramble to find an underlying pattern to the consistently off-the-cuff foreign policy moves made by the current White House.

"I don't see any chance for Trump resigning, unless there were some impeachment proceedings, the way Richard Nixon did when he resigned," noted executive director of the Washington office of the International Institute for Strategic Studies Mark Fitzpatrick, cited by Dw.com.